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Costs mounting as Colorado begins recovery from floods

Sherry Ford on Tuesday cleans a flood-damaged house at Ford Horse Ranch along County Road 388 in Kersey. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

Throughout flood-ravaged communities, local, state and federal agencies are working together to restore normalcy and determine the extent of damage.

The repair estimate for state-owned roads and bridges alone is $430 million, according to Micki Trost, spokeswoman for the Colorado Office of Emergency Management.

The state's estimated cost for operating the State Emergency Operations Center, providing resources to local jurisdictions, and obtaining air and ground support from the National Guard is $19.5 million, she said.

Air evacuations and other costs to the state for National Guard support amounted to $7.1 million of that total, Trost said. It costs about $8,300 an hour to keep a helicopter in the air, and during the emergency, the choppers flew about 440 hours while evacuating residents and completing other operations, for about $3.6 million of the total National Guard costs.

On Wednesday, Gov. John Hickenlooper hosted the first of what is expected to be weekly conference calls with state and local officials to discuss flood-recovery efforts.

"The idea behind these is to make sure we all have the same sets of facts, that we are getting information out as quickly as we can and we are as transparent as possible," he told the officials who joined in the call.

Among other things, Hickenlooper told the officials that more than $22 million in disaster grants has been approved for homeowners and renters.

The Colorado Department of Transportation has its own crews — as well as paid contractors and more than 600 National Guardsmen — rebuilding the damaged bridges and roads right now.

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CDOT said it's still certain every road and highway will be passable by Dec. 1. Major trouble spots are in the mountains, where some roadways are 85 percent damaged, including U.S. 34.

Property assessors from local, state, federal and Small Business Administration offices are tallying up damage to properties, roads and bridges along the Front Range.

"We still have damage assessment and flood assistance going on throughout each of the counties affected by flooding," said Trost.

It will take at least several weeks for assessors from Larimer County and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to finish their work, Larimer County Sheriff's Office spokesman John Schulz said Wednesday.

With washed-out roads scarring the landscape, many areas of Larimer County are inaccessible to those assessing damage, he said.

Initial damage estimates for Boulder County-owned bridges, roads, and buildings is $91 million, said county spokeswoman Barbara Halpin. "But that is only 61 percent of our roads and bridges," she said.

"We do have teams now doing more assessment of houses," she said. "That is the next report that FEMA wants."

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